Reading comp PrepTest 118 · Section 2 · Question 4

Topic: Social Science

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Old approach is being reevaluated
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Old approach to disaster relief - Send a ton of resources, people, and money as soon as possible after the disaster
  • Agencies/communities/nations rethinking this

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Why old approach is bad
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Hard-hit communities have second disaster - how to house/feed personnel and how to manage aid in wake of disaster
  • Examples - Food goes to black markets; billions of dollars in aid go missing

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • New Approach - Prior planning of long-term aid
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Shift focus to long-term
  • Work with disaster-prone areas to plan out aid ahead of time
  • Short-term - Community takes lead
  • Benefit - Community defines what would help, not just a flood of resources

Paragraph 4

• Paragraph note
  • What new approach depends on - donor attitude
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Donors tend to donate just right after crisis
  • Disaster-hit communities have long-term needs (Example - Rebuild infrastructure)

Main Point: The old approach to disaster relief of immediately flooding an area with aid and personnel has led to secondary disasters, and a better approach is to plan with these communities ahead of disaster how to respond and let them take the lead, though this requires donors to respond positively to this long-term focus.

Lines 1-6 - Set up reevaluation of old approach

Lines 11-15 - Old approach

Lines 20-26 - Why old approach is bad

Lines 31-36 - New approach

Lines 45-47 - A requirement for the new approach to work

Old Approach/New Approach - This passage talks about the “traditional ways” of dealing with natural disasters in Paragraph 1, and a discussion of such traditional ways of approaching something generally previews an Old Approach/New Approach passage. This is especially true here, since the Author opens the passage by stating that this approach is being reevaluated. She then points out why it isn’t working (Paragraph 2) before bringing up an alternative New Approach (Paragraph 3). In Old Approach/New Approach passages, the Author’s opinion of the new approach generally makes up the main point. Here, the Author says that the proposal “appears sound” (Line 45), but that it depends on donors responding positively to the long-term focus (Lines 45-47; Lines 54-59). This qualified positive view should be reflected in the main point, which is how we arrived at our summary above.

Examples - There are a few places where limited examples are stated in the passage. Lines 1-2 provide a few examples of natural disasters. Lines 26-30 show a few examples of problems that have happened with the old approach. Lines 52-53 bring up an example of the type of long-term need a community has after a disaster. Each of these is pretty limited in scope, so we should expect them to feature in, at most, a single question - if they show up at all.

There’s one particularly unexpected element that it would be important to note, showing up in Paragraph 3. That paragraph focuses on the new approach to disaster relief, and it states that there should be a shift of focus “to the long term” (Line 32). However, the passage also talks about what should happen in the “immediate aftermath” of the disaster (Line 39). This makes sense - if you don’t provide some relief right after the disaster, you’re not going to make it to the long-term! However, since the paragraph features a discussion of a new approach that focuses on the long-term, it’d be easy to think that it's at the expense of short-term aid. That’s not the case - the long-term view includes how to address short-term issues while not losing sight of the needs of the community a year or two down the road.